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Forum:Style Guide
A number of fan Wikis I visit implement a Manual of Style that defines the way information should be presented on the site, both in the way the text should be layed out on the page and the manner in which information is presented. Over the next few days, I will draft a preliminary guide that other users can comment on, allowing discussion on what should and should not be suggested writing styles. In the meantime, if there are particular aspects individuals would like to see implemented, please respond here so that they can be discussed. To begin, however, I have a few style guides I would hope could be agreed upon by the community: Grammatical person : Unless it cannot be avoided at all, use of the grammatical person should be limited to 3rd person only. As this is an encyclopedia of sorts, it should have a bit of grammatical professionalism: "You can evolve Summer Piloswine into Summer Mamoswine after 5 days with a Sun Stone in Sunny Weather" is poor writing, and should be replaced with "Summer Piloswine evolves into Summer Mamoswine after 5 days with a Sun Stone in Sunny Weather". Situations where a player needs to be mentioned (e.g., "You choose attacks by selecting the "Change Attacks and hold items" option) should be adjusted by using another term to replace the pronoun avoiding it entirely (e.g., "The user can choose attacks etc." or "Attacks can be chosen by selecting the "Change Attacks and hold items" option). Nouns, Capitalization, titles, and terminology : Pokémon, and any terms with "Poké" as part of the name, should be written with the accented e (é). In Windows, this can be achieved by having NUM LOCK activated, holding the ALT key, and pressing 130 on the number pad. Authors that have the Alt+Gr key can hold it, press the apostrophe key, then release and press e. If all else fails, copy the é from a page that does have it and paste it in the appropriate location. : The plural of Pokémon is Pokémon, and this also holds for individual species (one Basculin, two Basculin, red Basculin, blue Basculin). : The name of the page should appear in the lede (opening paragraphs) as soon as possible, and should be bolded. Example: :: The Battle Tower is a section of GPX+ that allows users to submit Pokémon to battle in a manner similar to their video game counterparts. Spoilers : Ideally the first section of the style guide, but no "spoilers" as defined by the GPX+ staff should appear anywhere on this site, including one's user/talk page (perhaps in sub-pages other users are not likely to find, but we'd need to bounce this off of BB and/or discuss among us here). This includes the following so far: *No Egg Descriptions. Egg images are OK, but they should not be named or have any other indicator as to what would hatch from the egg. *No explaining the tasks of an exploration. This one is less strict, but I know Zerxer has still asked that we try not to do this. The way the Explorations page is right now is good; let's not deviate from that. : Less strictly, I would not mind putting somewhat spoilery things behind cuts/hides. The NPC battle for one of the explorations, for example, is in plain view on the Battle Tower page, and I wouldn't mind putting it behind a cut so as to keep it as somewhat of a surprise. This can be discussed, however. Finally, there are some topics to which I am ambivalent and would appreciate feedback: American/British spelling : Throughout GPX+, the staff have attempted to consistently spell words using the British spelling where applicable. On the one hand, I feel that mimicking that here would be ideal, as we are presenting the information as it is on GPX+. On the other... well, I don't know the nationalities of the users here, for the most part, but at any rate we should be consistent with what we use across pages; let's not have colour on the Novelty page but color on the Pokédex, for example. And that's it, for now. Please feel free to leave feedback on any of these points so we can talk about them together. Sp des Slick 13:53, June 15, 2011 (UTC) : Whoops, never mind, I didn't see we already had one. OK, scratch this idea. Sp des Slick 13:56, June 15, 2011 (UTC) :: I read through this guideline you made. You know, feel free to edit/rewrite the current Manual of Style page all you like to improve it. Keep in mind the one we currently have was written almost a year ago; It could do with a renovation. :: And also, I have to say that I in large part agree with you on the spoiler situation you mentioned. The Exploration NPC could do with being for the most part hidden, as it is arguably borderline "exploration task explaining". Perhaps just having it say "NPC Battle for Name" until opened. The others could also possibly be shrunken down as well (but to a lesser extent), more similar to the party templates on Bulbapedia. I have to admit though, I am not 100% certain on how to do this. [[User:M190049|''~m190049]][[User talk:M190049|~talk]] 03:50, June 16, 2011 (UTC) ::: Bluh, the original cannot be edited right now -_- I need to see about PMing the Admin about giving a few of us some more privilidges. 'Sp' 'des Slick''' 23:45, July 2, 2011 (UTC)